When Queen Anne came to the throne it was thought prudent to make some provision which would insure a Protestant government for all time to Britain. The English Parliament therefore passed an Act of Succession in June, 1700: “Settling the crown, on the failure of Queen Anne and her issue, upon the grand-daughter of King James the First, of England—Sophia, Electress Dowager of Hanover, and her descendants. Queen Anne, and her statesmanlike adviser, Godolphin, saw the necessity of uniting Scotland in this agreement; but the Scottish people complained that they were not only required to surrender their public rights, according to the terms proposed, but also to yield them up to the very nation who had been most malevolent to them in all respects; who had been their constant enemies during a thousand years of almost continual war; and who, even since they had been united under the same crown, had shown in the massacre of Glencoe, and the disasters of Darien, at what a slight price they held the lives and rights of their northern neighbors.”
“The Tale of the Black Dwarf” is related to the time of this fierce discussion in Scotland, as to the adoption or rejection of this proposed union; when mobs and rabbles crowded High Street; when the hall of meeting, contrary to the privileges of Edinburgh, was surrounded by guards and soldiery; when the debaters were often “in the form of a Polish Diet, with their swords in their hands, or at least their hands on their swords.” After a vain struggle the Scottish commissioners were compelled to submit to an incorporating union, and on the twenty-second of April the Parliament of Scotland adjourned forever. For the moment all parties were indignant. Papists, Prelatists, and Presbyterians were united in the common feeling that the country had been treated with injustice. Lord Belhaven, in a celebrated speech, which made the strongest impression on the people, declared that he saw, in prophetic vision, “The peers of Scotland, whose ancestors had raised tribute in England, now walking in the Courts of Requests, like so many English attorneys, laying aside their swords, lest self-defense should be called murder—he saw the Scottish barons with their lips padlocked to avoid the penalties of unknown laws—he saw the Scottish lawyers struck mute and confounded at being subjected to the intricacies and technical jargon of an unknown jurisprudence—he saw the merchants excluded from trade by the English monopolies—the artisans ruined for want of custom—the gentry reduced to indigence—the lower ranks to starvation and beggary. ‘But above all, my lord,’ he continued, ‘I think I see our ancient mother Caledonia, like Cæsar, sitting in the midst of our senate, ruefully looking around her, covering herself with her royal mantle, awaiting the fatal blow, and breathing out her last with the exclamation, “And thou too, my son.”’” These prophetic words made the deepest impression, until the effect was in some degree dispelled by Lord Marchmount, who rising to reply, said: “I have been much struck with the noble lord’s vision, but I conceive that the exposition of it might be given in a few words: I woke, and behold it was a dream.”
If in these critical times the King of France had kept his promise to the son of James the Second, or if his Scottish friends had been more united or possessed a leader of distinguished talent, the House of Stuart might have repossessed their ancient throne of Scotland. The French fleet indeed brought the Pretender with an army of five thousand men to the Frith of Forth, but, frightened by the English fleet, returned to France without landing. It was an enterprise entirely devoid of spirit, and the closing chapters of the “Black Dwarf” reveal a pitiful picture of the apathy of the movement, and the indecision and incapacity of the Pretender’s adherents.
“Rob Roy” introduces us to the wild fastnesses which lie between Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine. The state of the country is still unsettled. The Highlanders have been kept comparatively quiet since the days of King William by giving pensions to the leading chiefs, upon the principle of feeding the wilder and fiercer animals in order to keep them tractable; but, like a rock poised on a precipice, the clans seem ready at an instant to break loose and precipitate themselves upon the lowlands; the Jacobites still retain hope of restoring the Stuart line. The Whigs, continually on the alert, anticipate every movement; the slightest whisper in Paris is heard at the London Court; it also appeared that Louis the Fourteenth was nowise disposed to encourage any plot to disturb the reigning monarch of England; the Pretender hastened to Paris upon receiving tidings of the death of Queen Anne, but his reception was so unfavorable that he returned to Lorraine, “with the sad assurance that the monarch of France was determined to adhere to the treaty of Utrecht, by an important article of which he had recognized the succession of the House of Hanover to the Crown of Great Britain.”
George the First landed at Greenwich, September seventeenth, 1714, and quietly assumed the government; but the seething plot of Macbeth’s witches was not yet skimmed. The rebellion known as “The Affair of 1715” was organized and guided by the Earl of Mar. The clans were again in arms, and the Pretender again hailed as king. In the battle of Sheriffmuir, which followed soon afterward, an outlawed clan whose name for generations was only mentioned in whisper, “nameless by day” and fierce through oppression, remained inactive upon the field. They were ordered by the Earl of Mar to charge the enemy, but the bold chieftain answered with haughty indifference: “If you can not win without us you will not with us.” The speaker was Robert Mac Gregor, more generally known as Rob Roy. Like Robin Hood of England he is said to have been a kind and gentle robber, who harried the rich and relieved the poor. As Scott says in his introduction to the romance: “He maintained through good report and bad report a wonderful degree of importance in popular recollection. He owed his fame in a great measure to his residing on the very verge of the Highlands, and playing such pranks in the beginning of the eighteenth century as are usually ascribed to the freebooters of the middle ages—and that within forty miles of Glasgow, a great commercial city, the seat of a learned university. Thus a character like his, blending the wild virtues, the subtle policy, and unrestrained license of an American Indian, was flourishing in Scotland during the Augustan age of Queen Anne and George the First—the sept of Mac Gregor claimed a descent from Alpin, King of Scots, who ruled about 787. Hence their original patronymic is Mac Alpine. They occupied at one period very extensive possessions in Perthshire and Argyleshire, which they imprudently continued to hold by the right of the sword. Their neighbors, the Earls of Argyle and Breadalbane, managed to have this property engrossed in deeds and charters, which they easily obtained from the crown.” In plain English, they stole it, and obtained a commission by an Act of Privy Council in 1563 to pursue the claim with fire and sword. No wonder that the Mac Gregors came to have little regard for the law which had little regard for them. In sympathy for the oppressed outlaw, Wordsworth breaks out in enthusiastic tribute:
Say then that he was wise as brave,
As wise in thought as bold in deed;
For in the principles of things
He sought his moral creed.
Said generous Rob, “What need of books?